A New Way to WAAC & Min/Max That We Never Expected?

The store is running a very funky tournament in February, and because the French article I wrote about it is pretty nice ( stay modest, Frenchie), here’s the translated version, along with a more detailed explanation of the rules.

At the beginning of the round, you swap your list and army with your opponent. He is forced to play yours, and vice versa.

The idea is then to make a truly terrible list.

A couple of rules for ease of play :

1. You will be asked to leave if you are not careful handling other player’s models. This is the most important rule.
2. 1490-1500 points, single CAD comp. This is to keep things simple for everyone through list building and playing with a foreign- and bad- army.
3. You cannot make an auto lose army. Something that can’t have models on the board turn one for example.
4. You must have a clear and printed list. Again, this is to keep everything simple for everyone.
5. No proxies. Yes, if the only army you own is the Eldar Spider spam, this tournament might not be for you. If you collect Space Marines since 1992, chances are you have the perfect models to make an awesome (terrible) list.

Now, the fun part: Building your truly terrible list. Readers of this blog know that I am somewhat an expert in the build weird random armies genre. As such, here’s a few things to help you make the most (less) out of your list!

The first thing to note is that units that seem bad are not sometime in fact bad. HAHAHA, I’ll give give him 60 tactical marines with no weapons. Looks bad, but what you are giving him is 12 Objective secured units that most likely have a better stat line and gun than the crap models he’s giving you.  HA! I’ll give him scouts then. Same problem, but now you’ve given him outflank and infiltrate on 12 obsec units. DAMMIT! Don’t even get me started on giving your opponent psychic powers…

The second thing is point sinks. This is the key here : units that are sometimes ignored in regular game because they take up so much points. Spending 60 points for 2 thunder hammers on a space marine sarge that most likely will never make it in combat sure looks nice. Now if you can do this to the whole squad…

So with this in mind, here’s 4 top contender for best (worst) lists, and a few ideas using other books.

Anti-nergy Daemons

Demons have a lot of synergy between them. What they also have is rules that prevent them for interacting with each other. Here’s a fun list :

• Daemon Prince of Nurgle, Grotti the Nurgling, no other war gear. Possibly 5 lesser rewards, that’s a lot of points for not much results. So this guy moves 6, can’t run and gives -1T to all non-Nurgle models around him. He’s basically Amumu from LoL, crying alone in his corner of the board.
• Herald of Khorne, no war gear. Warlord. Now the best part, the warlord is a T3, 2W model that can’t be in a unit, because we won’t have other Khorne units for him to join.
• Daemons troops are all pretty good or at least decent. 2x 3 Nurglings is our best bet here.
• Good (bad) stuff : 60 Furries, 3 canons of Khorne, Fiends of Slanesh, in small units.

Classic Space Marines, we’re using Salamanders because we won’t make use of their chapter tactic, except maybe getting flamer-ed to the face. The magic number here is 9, because it takes up a lot of point and can’t combat squad.

• HQ- Captain, plasma pistol, Melta Bomb. We want to run 2 of this guy, he’s the best (worst)
• Troops : 2x 9 Space Marines, Sarge with Melta Bomb, Plasma Pistol, and combi-plasma.
• Heavy : Our point fillers are devastators, because we can run them the same as out troops, but they don’t have objective secured. Much better.
• Heavy-hitters (not)
• Command Squad and 9 Vanguard Veterans without Jump Packs. You can go Plasma Pistol and thunderhammer, or 2x Thunderhammer per model on every single dude here. Guys that’s walk 6 and run.  And cost 70+ points each.

Pale Grey Legion:

CSM players have been whining for years that their book was the worst, well now’s the chance to share that pain with others. A lot like our Space Marines List, however CSM do it better (worst) because they have more fun options.

• Note that every model that can do so will take Mark of Slaanesh and Veterans of the Long War. Because overall it’s a lot of points and not really anything deice rulewise.
• Lord, plasma pistol, Mark of Khorne, Melta Bomb, VotLW. He’s the MVP of this list, so we’ll run 2. Mark of Khorne means he can’t be with any unit from our army except the other lord.
• Troops: Classic Chaos space marines, minimal numbers, with plasma pistols. We want to max out the points on these but take as few as possible, because Obsec, and we have a squad that does exactly like this, but better (worse) Havocs. The exact same unit as the troops, but not Obsec, hallelujathankyoujesus MVP again.
• Our best (worst) unit: Chosen. Much like the vanguard veterans, these guy can take basically infinite war gear that doesn’t do much of dudes walking. Spend as much on these guys as you have remaining.

Tau take the top spot for truly awesome (terrible) list. Tau are annoying because they have OP options on every model. The good thing about this, is that they also have terrible option on every models. SO WE WILL FIELD ALL THE OPTIONS.